Well, not right now but…

…as of today you can preorder your iPhone 3G from O2. The offer allows existing O2 subscribers to break the upgrade cycle . Many existing O2 users have been swamping the site applying for the upgrade. In fact, traffic was so heavy that the site crashed!

This announcemnt means iPhone users will get their upgraded handset on Friday 11 July. Ok, I know some of you are saying ‘it’s just another iPhone’ but you have to admit that the addition of 3G and GPS makes it pretty bloody attractive.

The O2 offer is available until 11 October this year - if you miss out now, don’t worry. I’m sure O2 have plenty of stock.

I’ve just had a look at O2’s site and there’s a message stating that the iPhone 3G is out of stock, come  back on 11th July - bugger!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Now, as you may or may not know Hans Reiser, the founder of ReiserFS (Linux file system) was found guilty of his of his wifes murder. Reiser and his wife, Nina, had been going through a bitter divorce battle when she disappeared in 2006.

According to the San Francisco Chronical, police believe that Reiser has lead them to her remains in the hills of Oklahoma, California. As yet the remains have not been formally identified.

Reiser is currently being held, without bail, pending his sentencing on Wednesday.

Popularity: 21% [?]

It’s all up in the air!

Now this is amazing; mid air views with users interacting with Google Earth using their hands. The potential for Human Computer Interface (HCI) is awesome.

The holographic interface is being developed by lm3labs…I’m going to stop talking now, check it out here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

8,002,530 is the number to beat.

That’s right, FF 3 was downloaded over 8 million times in the first 24 hours of availability following a campaign to mobilise the Open Source community.

“As the arbiter and recorder of the world’s amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla’s achievement to our archives,” Gareth Deaves, records manager at Guinness Worlds Records, said in a statement.

On the day the record was FireFox also notched up 6% of market share; its highest figure so far. Now that’s pretty impressive regardless of how you look at it. Well done, keep up the good work

Popularity: 21% [?]

DoJ launches anti-trust investigation.

It would seem the US Department of Justice is a little edgey about the deal which allows Yahoo to serve Google ads. To be honest, I’m not really surprised when you consider that the deal effectively wraps up 80% of the search market between two companies!

Ok, the deal hasn’t actually gone ahead yet as Google and Yahoo have agreed to give the DoJ 3 months to investigate but as the companies aren’t merging the deal doesn’t need upfront approval. If found to be anti-competitive the deal could be stopped or modified.

Given that the advertising rights are not exclusive, I would say that this deal will be approved with little or no change to the wording.

I wonder how Microsoft will answer this!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Bad news for gamers.

A new Trojan is spreading fast in World of Warcraft. The malware, which originated in Asia, is slowly spreading through the gaming world with the main activity being in China and Taiwan.

The malware attempts to steal log-in details from YouXiChaYuan and Perfect World, two online games popular in China and some other Asian countries.

The Trojan, ‘W32/OnlineGames!tr’, appears to be limited to specific language versions of Windows or the World of Warcraft client - for now. Hackers tend to rewrite malware code to target new sectors and attempt to bypass security mechanisms so expect to see this Trojan heading you way. As yet, the method of infection is unknown.

“With the online gaming market thriving with consumers, malicious activity will very likely continue for some time in this emerging sector as it forms a viable target,” said Derek Manky of Fortinet.

Unhappy times ahead; make sure you’re protected with the latest anti-malware updates and signatures.

Popularity: 83% [?]

…hardware market to defy the economy.

I said it yesterday and now Gartner have confirmed it (I feel really good when things like this happen).

The predictions came out of the Gartner IT Hardware Insights forum, which was held at the company’s UK headquarters in Egham, Surrey.

Senior research analyst Errol Rasit said the period from 2008 to 2009 will be marked by a split in the market for hardware. “At the high end and the very low end, we have two very large groups who are spending,” he said. Linux-based systems are a beneficiary of this trend, thanks to the move away from high-end Unix systems to x86-based systems.

It looks like IBM are going to benefit as well. There is renewed interest in the zSeries mainframe as companies seek to achieve economies of scale through the purchase of larger systems. That said, the server market is still dominated by Sun which is good news. I’m a huge Open Source fan and Sun are the number one contributors which makes me very happy.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Trailing the US by a long chalk!

Same old story; the US leads the way in yet another area. The business world is being driven by an information explosion which would have easily swamped traditional methods of computing. The virtualised world provided companies with the ability to side step issues associated with power requirements, physical space and virtualised storage. But the uptake in Europe is slow.

Recent independent surveys conducted in both the United States and Europe indicate that the majority of businesses surveyed in bothregions believe that their existing storage solutions will only be able to scale for the next one to two years.

It is widely recognised that storage virtualisation is the best way to provide a alleviate many current but only 27% of European  respondents are actually implementing
storage virtualisation today as compared with 35% in the US.

73% of US respondents reported that they currently operate a virtualised server environment, and 67% answered that they are considering deploying virtualised storage in their data centres.

In the US, 45% of businesses surveyed stated that they would realise
operational cost savings between 20-40%, which is the main driver of
storage adoption. In Europe that figure was near identical on 48%.

Other significant results from the survey include:

• 59% of respondents believe that at the current growth rate, their existing storage solution will be able to scale for only one totwo years; way ahead of the European market, which was on 40%

• Half of US respondents believe that simplifying management is the most important consideration when choosing a storage virtualisationsolution. In Europe the figure was far higher on 60% of the sample.

• 45% of US respondents consider 20-40% operational cost savings to be the number one motivation to switch from their current file storage solution to virtualised storage. In Europe the figure was comparable at 48%.

I guess it’s time for European countries to get their act in order; we wouldn’t to fall behind the US, would we?

Popularity: 24% [?]

All together now, ‘ENCRYPTION’!

Yes, you’ve already guessed what I’m going to say but what the hell; an NHS trust hospistal has 21,000 patients details. The data was stored on unencrypted laptop lost by the Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust.

Details of patient names, dates of birth, postcodes and treatment details, were on the laptop which was stolen from the car of a Colchester trust manager. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will investigate whether the organisation breached the Data Protection Act by failing to encrypt patient data.

Trust chief executive Peter Murphy stated that there is “very small chance that patient details can be accessed” and that the trust believes “the data will almost certainly by wiped by the thief” - or so they hope!

So, another case of your data being lost by those entrusted to keep it safe. Another day, another cock up!

Popularity: 21% [?]